Paris/Beirut – Israel has scored a major intelligence success by apparently infiltrating a supply chain to cause the simultaneous explosion of hundreds of Hezbollah pagers in a blow for the Lebanese militant group and its Iranian backers, analysts say.
At least nine people were killed and some 2,800 wounded, including the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, when the pagers exploded in Hezbollah strongholds across the country in an unprecedented simultaneous attack.
With Hezbollah appearing to prefer the use of pagers for internal communications over smartphones for security reasons, analysts said it appeared Israel had corrupted the devices before delivery, allowing them to explode at a specific time.
A source close to Hezbollah, asking not to be identified, told AFP that “the pagers that exploded concern a shipment recently imported by Hezbollah of 1,000 devices”, which appear to have been “sabotaged at source”.
“For Israel to embed an explosive trigger within the new batch of pagers, they would have likely needed access to the supply chain of these devices,” said Brussels-based military and security analyst Elijah Magnier.
“Israeli intelligence has infiltrated the production process, adding an explosive component and remote triggering mechanism into the pagers without raising suspicion,” he said, raising the prospect the third party that sold the devices could have been an “intelligence front” set up by Israel for the purpose.
Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute said: “This was more than lithium batteries being forced into override. A small plastic explosive was almost certainly concealed alongside the battery, for remote detonation via a call or page.”
“Mossad infiltrated the supply chain,” he concluded, referring to Israel’s intelligence agency.
The Wall Street Journal cited people familiar with the matter as saying the affected pagers were from a new shipment that the group received in recent days.
Hezbollah has already blamed Israel for the explosions. Israel, which traditionally does not comment on security operations outside the country, has yet to confirm or deny its involvement.
It remains unclear whether the action could tip the region into a regional war between Israel and Hezbollah that the West has been battling to avoid ever since Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel sparked a war in Gaza.
But the images captured on camera of pagers exploding are a major security blow for Hezbollah and an illustration of Israel’s reach even into its members’ pockets.
The action comes after senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr was killed in a targeted Israeli air strike on July 30 that indicated Israel had precise information about his whereabouts.
Just a day later, the political leader of Hamas, Ismael Haniyeh was killed in a residence in Tehran, reportedly using an explosive device that had been placed by Israeli operatives weeks before.
French defense expert Pierre Servent said the latest action against Hezbollah would help Israeli intelligence services restore their reputation, which was badly dented by the October 7 attack.
“The series of operations conducted over the past few months marks their big comeback, with a desire for deterrence and a message: ‘We messed up but we’re not dead,'” he told AFP.
Former CIA analyst Mike Dimino of the US-based Defense Priorities think tank said that judging by images of the injuries a “very small explosive” implanted inside the devices was the most likely cause, rather than an overheating battery.
“This was a classic sabotage operation,” he said on X, adding such an operation takes “months if not years” to orchestrate.
Dubai-based analyst Riad Kahwaji said that Israel had taken advantage of Hezbollah’s move away from smartphones to pagers.
Israel intelligence had conducted a “most professional operation”, he said.
“Without a doubt, one of the factories it (Israel) owns manufactured and shipped these explosive devices that exploded today,” he said.
As reported earlier, hundreds of pager devices used by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon Tuesday, killing at least nine people and wounding some 2,800 in blasts the Iran-backed militant group blamed on Israel.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the wave of explosions, which came just hours after Israel announced it was broadening the aims of the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attacks to include its fight against Hezbollah along its border with Lebanon.
The son of Hezbollah lawmaker Ali Ammar was killed and Hassan Fadlallah’s son was injured in the attack, a source close to the group told AFP, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
The blasts “killed nine people, including a girl”, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said in a casualty update.
He added that some “2,800 people were injured, about 200 of them critically” with injuries mostly reported to the face, hands, and stomach.
The 10-year-old daughter of a Hezbollah member was killed in east Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley when his pager exploded, the family and a source close to the group said.
Tehran’s ambassador to Beirut was also wounded in a pager explosion but his injuries were not serious, Iranian state media reported.
In neighboring Syria, 14 people were wounded “after pagers used by Hezbollah exploded”, said a Britain-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Hezbollah blamed Israel for the blasts and warned it would be punished.
“We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression,” the group said in a statement, adding that Israel “will certainly receive its just punishment for this sinful aggression”.
The United States, Israel’s top arms provider, and close ally, was “not involved” and “not aware of this incident in advance”, said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.
The afternoon blasts hit Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon and dealt a heavy blow to the militant group, which already had concerns about the security of its communications after losing several key commanders to targeted air strikes in recent months.
Hezbollah had instructed its members to avoid mobile phones after the Gaza war began and to rely instead on the group’s own telecommunications system to prevent Israeli breaches.
“Hundreds of Hezbollah members were injured by the simultaneous explosion of their pagers” in the group’s strongholds in Beirut’s southern suburbs, in south Lebanon, and in the eastern Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah source said, requesting anonymity.
AFP journalists saw dozens of wounded being taken to hospital in Beirut and in the south, where dozens of ambulances rushed between the cities of Tyre and Sidon in both directions.
Education Minister Abbas Halabi announced the closure of schools and universities on Wednesday “in condemnation of the criminal act committed by the Israeli enemy”.
According to media reports, Lebanon’s foreign ministry has condemned what it called an “Israeli cyber attack,” in which hundreds of handheld pagers exploded across Lebanon and parts of Syria.
The ministry said in a statement that it is preparing to submit a complaint to the U.N. Security Council.
“This dangerous and deliberate Israeli escalation is accompanied by Israeli threats to expand the scope of the war against Lebanon on a large scale, and by the intransigence of Israeli’s positions calling for more bloodshed, destruction, and devastation,” it said.
Also, Iran’s foreign minister has strongly condemned what he and other officials say was an Israeli attack in which hundreds of pagers exploded across Lebanon and parts of Syria.
Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reports that Abbas Araghchi made the comments in a phone conversation with his Lebanese counterpart, Abdallah Bou Habib.
Earlier Tuesday, Israel announced it was broadening the aims of the war sparked by the Hamas attacks to include its fight against Hezbollah along its border with Lebanon.
To date, Israel’s objectives have been to crush Hamas and bring home the hostages seized by Palestinian militants during the October 7 attacks that sparked the war.
“The political-security cabinet updated the goals of the war this evening so that they include the following section: the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.
Since October, the unabating exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hamas ally Hezbollah in Lebanon have forced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border to flee their homes.
Not formally declared as a war by Israel, the exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah have killed hundreds of mostly fighters in Lebanon, and dozens on the Israeli side.
On Monday, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned that failing a political solution, “military action” would be “the only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities”.
Hezbollah, which like Hamas is backed by Israel’s regional arch-foe Iran, claimed a dozen attacks on Israeli positions on Monday and three more on Tuesday.
Before the wave of pager explosions, Israel said it killed three Hezbollah members in a strike on Lebanon on Tuesday.
“The possibility for an agreement is running out as Hezbollah continues to tie itself to Hamas,” Gallant’s office quoted him as telling visiting US envoy Amos Hochstein.
Netanyahu later told Hochstein he was seeking a “fundamental change” in the security situation on Israel’s northern border.
Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem said at the weekend that his group had “no intention of going to war”, but that “there will be large losses on both sides” in the event of all-out conflict.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was due back in the region to try to revive stalled ceasefire talks for the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
After months of mediated negotiations failed to pin down a ceasefire, Washington said it was still pushing all sides to finalize an agreement.
US officials have expressed increasing frustration with Israel as Netanyahu has publicly rejected US assessments that a deal is nearly complete and has insisted on an Israeli military presence on the Egypt-Gaza border.
The October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also seized 251 hostages, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,252 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not provide a breakdown of civilian and militant deaths.
On Tuesday, UN member states were debating a draft resolution demanding an end to the Israeli occupation of all Palestinian territories within 12 months.
General Assembly resolutions are not binding, but Israel has already denounced the new text as “disgraceful”.
In Gaza, rescuers said several Israeli air strikes killed at least seven people overnight.